Traditional methods for producing battery plates for lead-acid batteries generally involve a mixing, curing and drying operation in which the active materials in the battery paste undergo chemical and physical changes that are used to establish the chemical and physical structure and subsequent mechanical strength necessary to form the battery plate. To produce typical battery plates, materials are added to commercial paste mixing machines common in the industry in the order of lead oxide, flock, water and sulfuric acid, which are then mixed to a paste consistency. During mixing, chemical reactions take place in the paste producing basic lead sulfates, the most common of which is tribasic lead sulfate. The final paste composition is a mixture of basic lead sulfates, unreacted lead monoxide and residual free lead particles. Pasting is the process of making a battery plate from the paste mix. This paste is dispersed into a commercial automatic pasting machine of a type common in the industry which applies the paste to a grid structure composed of a lead alloy. The paste is dispensed into a hopper on the pasting machine and from there the paste is applied to the grids at high speed. The paste plates are generally surface dried in a tunnel dryer of a type common in the industry and then either stacked in columns or placed on racks. The stacked or racked plates are then placed in curing chambers. In these chambers the plates are subjected to temperatures of 70° C.–80° C. in a high humidity atmosphere to convert the tribasic lead sulfate in the plates to tetra basic lead sulfate and to allow oxidation of the residual free lead. The finished plates are now ready for assembly into batteries.
Two key factors important in the curing process are the formation of a proper crystal structure by converting tribasic lead sulfate (TRBLS) formed during paste mixing into tetra basic lead sulfate (TTBLS), and the formation of tetragonal lead oxide by oxidizing residual free lead metal. Generally, a crystal structure high in tetra basic lead sulfate will increase battery life. The general formula for converting tribasic lead sulfate to tetra basic lead sulfate is set forth below:

A common problem with traditional battery paste compositions and methods for curing is that the chemical characteristics of the resultant plates are not uniform, varying in quality. Other common problems include difficulty in the repeatability of production, uncertain and/or lengthy curing time, the large number of curing chambers needed to process plates, and high capital and energy costs.
Consequently, a need exists for improvements in battery pastes which may be used with conventional paste mixing and curing processes, procedures and equipment to produce positive and/or negative battery plates having greater uniformity, more consistent quality, more consistent reproducibility, requiring shorter and more consistent curing times, requiring less curing chambers to process the plates and less capital and energy costs than traditional positive and/or negative battery plate pastes and methods of paste mixing and curing.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and/or shortcomings of known prior art battery pastes and curing methods for battery plates and provides a significant improvement thereover.